Curtain Call
by mascaret
Summary: *complete* Laura's body is giving out and she's giving in, but Bill won't give up. A series of scenes Laura needed to have with various characters strung together by a plot.
1. Chapter 1

_Curtain Call_

_Bill part 1_

Despite the fact that the entire crew knew she had been staying in his quarters the past few months, usually when walking down the corridors they made some effort to separate themselves to be at least somewhat discreet. Not that it mattered anymore. No doubt his little display in the secondary storage bay had set at least one tongue wagging, but it wasn't as if they needed to wait for Baltar's next wireless address to disclose that information to the fleet. Laura's response to Zarek's lies wasn't likely to have left any doubt about their relationship for those listening – and considering that the exchange had been broadcast over an unsecured line while the basestar and the battlestar had been facing off with weapons locked, you could be fairly confident that everyone in the fleet had been listening.

He knew that she loved him – of that he had had no doubts. But there was a part of him that had always known that he loved her more than she loved him. She kept her heart well fortified against intruders. He couldn't fault her for that. Life's losses had taught her that lesson long ago.

They had had a transmitter with them as they headed for the CIC to retake it. Hearing her words to Zarek, discovering the true depth of her emotions for him had been something of a revelation.

She had sounded so strong, so determined over the com. All that adrenalin had left her now. Walking arm in arm with her from the ladder, he was keenly aware that he was supporting her more than just emotionally.

It had been hours since he had retaken control of the CIC. The long wait to be reunited had taken its toll on her. While Laura had immediately wanted to return to the Galactica upon hearing his voice, he had refused her shuttle permission to leave the basestar dock until he could be certain every part of his ship was secure and all those involved in the mutiny had been transferred to the _Astral Queen_. All those _except _Zarek and Gaeta.

Against all odds, them both having made it this far relatively unscathed, he wasn't about to lose her to a final desperate act on the part of some cornered mutineer or vengeful Zarek crony.

What had their worlds come to when he thought her safer on a cylon basestar than his own ship?

He moved his arm to her waist to better support her.

At the juncture, he found her pulling in the wrong direction. "Laura, everyone is assembled at the airlock."

She nodded without looking in his direction. "So you've said."

Still, she tried to lead him down the wrong path.

He assured her. "This will only take a few minutes then we can head back to our quarters."

"I just need a minute."

"They're waiting for our arrival, Laura."

"Just five minutes. Then I'll go with you." She squeezed his arm. "I promise."

He relented.

Closing the hatch to his quarters, he turned to find her slowly making her way across the room. She stopped by the desk and leaned against it.

"I need you."

He smiled. "I need you too."

She gave a light laugh as one of her hands reached to unclasp her pants. "I mean, I need you now. I need to feel you inside of me."

He couldn't think of what to say.

Zarek and Gaeta were waiting at that very moment for them to go witness their executions. They were already in the airlock.

She was starting to shake again. Moving closer, with not nearly the effort it should take, he lifted her on to the desk.

"No time for that." She reminded him as he leaned down to kiss her bare legs.

"We'll make time for it."

"Bill …" she yanked him by his hair with a force she didn't at the moment look to possess. "… I want – I need to feel you inside of me. I need to feel you alive inside of me."

Bill nodded. He understood that this wasn't about pleasure, but confirmation. One hand caressed her face as he kissed her lips. The other hand worked his buckle and pant fastenings. A reach of her hand and a few caresses that could hardly even be considered strokes had him hard enough to enter her. He tried to test the waters, to enter slowly, but pulling him towards her, she wouldn't have it. She wanted it all and she wanted it without any delay however necessary.

She flinched at the pain of her body's unpreparedness for him, but offered no other complaint. Not wanting to add to her discomfort, he held himself still inside her as he caressed her back through her blouse.

She rested her head against his chin. "Tom said you were …" she couldn't finish the words.

"He lied." Bill kissed a trail after the lone tear that escaped. It led him to her lips and he went willingly.

At the urging of her hips, he began to move inside her. They couldn't seem to get on the same rhythm. He tried to follow hers, but there was no regularity to it.

She broke the kiss by pulling her head back slightly. She was, he realized, having trouble catching her breath. He started to stop to let her recover, but she reprimanded him. "Not so slow."

He knew that since the return of her illness starting anything and being unable to complete it infuriated her. Being unable to complete this act, all the more so.

"You're very demanding today." He kissed the side of her face, her neck, her hand as it reached up to touch his face, anywhere he could reach on her.

"When aren't I?"

So true.

"I love frakking on desks. Did I ever tell you that was why I decided to become a teacher? So many desks all in one place."

He knew she was lying, about all of it, but he laughed for her anyway. They were using the desk because she certainly didn't have the stamina to be on top and her delicate frame couldn't support his girth for even a short time. Not that it mattered. What they were currently doing would be more accurately described as clinging to one another rather than frakking or even lovemaking.

She spoke directly into his ear. "Finish for me."

It was an easy enough command to follow. All he had to do was stop fighting with himself. Whenever he was inside her he found himself struggling to prolong her pleasure and not to lose control like a twelve year old.

After, with his arms still around her and a part of him inside her, she said it again. "Bill, I need you to finish this for me."

He started to protest. "Laura, you should be there."

Still holding herself against him, her head gave the slightest of shakes. "It needs to be done, but I don't need to see it."

"Laura, you're the President. You should –"

Her anguished tone put a stop to his pressing. "Tom and I … we used to …"

Trying not to show his apprehension, he waited for her to finish her revelation. Not that he wasn't thankful, but a small part of his mind still wondered how it came to be that at the start of the mutiny the guards outside his quarters were taken, but Laura was left inside unharmed. He realized that them both managing to survive the mutiny was no matter of divine intervention. The first order of business when overthrowing a government is to kill the old leaders so they can't attempt to regain control. Zarek was no fool. He knew that. Yet while Bill had been spared an immediate execution by the tattered remnants of Gaeta's once staunch sense of honor what had spared Laura?

Bill was many things, but blind wasn't one of them. He had seen the way Zarek had always looked at Laura – the anger and frustration at her professionally tinged with desire and an entirely different kind of frustration at her personally. Had Zarek spared her out of a sense of nostalgia for shared times past or in woefully mistaken hopes of a future?

If she had been involved with Zarek at one point – on New Caprica or shortly after the exodus when Bill had been still attempting to push her away it wouldn't exactly stun him. From what he knew of her past lovers, it seemed Laura's choice in men ranged from the slightly inappropriate to the wholly inappropriate – with Bill as no exception. If she had frakked Zarek, he was past caring about such petty things. She was here with him and alive. He would eagerly accept that as the cost.

" … We used to joke about the Quorum. I once, when they were being particularly unruly, suggested locking them in the room and letting them fight it out gladiator style until only one was left standing." As she squeezed her eyelids shut, a tear made its way out. "Tom said but that would still leave one. Let's just send in the marines and be done with them all."

With a sharp intake of air, she asked. "How did I not see this coming?"

"None of us did."

After another moment of holding her, he tried again. "We should get going."

"Yes, you should."

He made one final attempt. "You said you would come. You gave me your word."

She smiled ruefully. "Bill, I lied. I said what I had to to get what I wanted. I do that a lot. You really should have started to pick up on it by now."

She reached up with one hand to remove her wig. The hand shook and she couldn't seem to raise it high enough. As she started to just tug at some of the strands to pull the whole thing off, he reached up to properly remove the wig for her.

"We should take you to go see Cottle."

Starting to unbutton her blouse, she dismissed the idea. "Not tonight. I'm too tired to do this tonight."

He had to agree, she looked beyond exhausted and the doloxan treatments took so much out of her. Better to let her get a night's rest first. He helped her out of the rest of her clothes before more than half carrying her to their rack.

As he finished tucking her in, after having done most of the work of dressing her for bed himself, she did something she never did. She apologized. "I'm sorry, Bill. I really frakked things up this time."

"No you didn't, Laura. This wasn't your fault."

He could hear that she didn't believe him. He had never been as accomplished a liar as her. "If I had addressed the fleet sooner, if I hadn't just shut down maybe things wouldn't have gotten this far, but Earth hurt, Bill. I couldn't believe how much it hurt."

He knew what she meant. Neither had ever come right out and said it, but he knew they had both been hoping to find something on Earth – and that something wasn't a home for the fleet.

"This wasn't your fault, Laura. This was Zarek's doing."

"I put Tom Zarek in the vice presidency. I put him in the position to do this."

"We've both known since the beginning that Tom would do something like this sooner or later. Vice president or not, he would have tried it. You put him where you could keep him close and watch him."

"And then I stopped watching him." She grimaced.

"This isn't all Zarek's doing. Gaeta and the others had a choice."

"Did they Bill? When is the last time that any of us really had a choice?

"We asked too much too soon of people who have already been asked to give too much for too long. The cylons wiped out our civilization, our entire way of life. We've spent the last four years running from them to survive. Suddenly we're forming an alliance? Embracing their technology? Your pilots who have spent the last four years living in fear for their lives daily, watching their friends get blown out of the sky, are now being told to fly along side them? Have them watch their backs? We should have expected more resistance. I should have handled it better."

She sighed. "Maybe I would have if I had more time, but everything is running out Bill – food, water, fuel, _everything, _even time. Ships are breaking down_. _ We need to find a place to settle and we needed a way to get the cylons to let us settle."

"I know. You're right." He understood that – he understood it better than her. She was referring to civilian ships in the fleet breaking down. He hadn't yet told her about the structural wear Tyrol had discovered in the FTL drive room. But he also understood that he wasn't the one in the room that she was trying so desperately to convince with her words.

He picked up her hand to press a kiss to it – her hand felt so cold. "I'll be back soon."

She squeezed his hand. "Tell Lee I'll need to see him tomorrow first thing."

He rubbed her hand, trying to warm it. "Tomorrow first thing we need to see Cottle. You've been off the doloxan too long already. We can't give the cancer a chance to regroup." _Any more than it already had._

He tried to catch her eyes with his, but she closed hers.

"After Lee. I promise."


	2. Chapter 2

_Curtain Call_

_Chapter 2_

Bill entered their quarters their book in hand. "Laura?"

He spotted her on the leather couch half reclined waiting for him.

"I went to sickbay. You said you would go see Cottle after your talk with Lee."

She smiled at him. It was a guilty smile. "I did go see him, Bill."

She hadn't been in sickbay nearly long enough. A look to her wrist – still unmarred confirmed it before her words.

"It was just to talk, Bill." She patted a spot on the couch beside her, offering him the space at her feet. "We should talk, Bill. You and I."

She was his undoing.

He wasn't a fool. He knew that. He was so far past the possibility of being able to do anything to change it – not that he would even if he could - but he knew it.

Her wig was off. Bill despised the wig that was so unlike her real hair. They both did, but she wore it as a part of her Presidential facade. The cut of it was so harsh, it made her look so harsh, but it also hid many of the signs of her illness from the passing glances of those who didn't really have a need to know.

In place of the wig, she wore her scarf. Without the wig and her own hair her face looked so much softer. He could see so much more of it.

When she smiled, he could follow the way it changed not just her lips, but her whole face. How it created lines around her eyes and made the muscles in her cheeks move. She had a dimple in her cheek when she smiled. He had never noticed it before. It was so far back on her cheek – closer to her ear than her lips - that her hair had always covered it. He couldn't remember ever even having seen her ears before she lost her hair. They were small and one stuck out a bit more than the other, but they were perfect for her face. When her hair had been her own, there had just been so much of it. It had hidden so much.

She was waiting, staring up at him expectantly with that soft look. Her hand still caressed the space beside her.

He pulled the chair from the desk and set it across from her.

He didn't want to sit next to her. He had already learned that for him soft Laura was oh so much more perilous than harsh Madam President. He had a feeling that he would need all of his wits about him for this conversation.

Her tone was even – almost clinical as she started.

"I spoke to Cottle, Bill. If I stop the doloxan and all but the treatments that target the pain, he thinksI could have two, maybe even three good months before things get to be bad. And when they do, it will be like the last time – a few weeks of some good days and some bad days and then finally just a few very bad days before it's over.

"Bill, with the treatments we're talking a year, but not too much longer than that. For every two good days, there will be three or four bad ones and one or two very bad ones. And that's just at the start – that's what we've been doing. It is going to get worse. It is going to get a lot worse. You didn't have to see the last time. Instead of my Bill, I had my Billy. Towards the very end, he took to keeping my pills at his desk because sometimes I would forget and he was afraid I would take too many by accident or not forget and still take too many. But that's nothing, Bill, that is _nothing _compared to what I had to see with my mother."

Rehearsed – he realized would be a better word.

"I went the doloxan free route the first time and it may have been swift, Bill, but it was merciful. With the doloxan, Bill, by the end there will be nothing left of me. At the end of a doloxan year there will be just pain and a carcass."

Finally he was hearing real emotion in her voice, but he had long since stopped listening to the words.

"I'm tired of getting my good days in dribs and drabs, Bill. I want to have them in a deluge and then board the ship. I'll wait for you there on the shore, Bill. For as long as it takes, I will wait for you."

She reached to cup his face, but he pulled away.

This was what he had been dreading ever since she had told him of her dream, her vision of crossing over. She was using it as an excuse to stop fighting. She couldn't do that. He had to make her see that. She had once asked him to live for today because maybe tomorrow really isn't coming. Maybe today is all they had left. But he needed her to fight for tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, and the tomorrow after that one because what if tomorrows were all that they had left? What if there was no hereafter?

She had her faith in her gods and a vision of a shore to cling to. He didn't have any gods. All his faith was in the woman before him. She was all he had to cling to.

He knew she was waiting now. Waiting for a response from him. She looked tensed for a fight which was good because he had every intention of giving her one.

"What if you're wrong? What if there really is no shore? No Fields of Elysium? What if this is all that there is? Today and as many tomorrows as we can get hold of?"

Her eyes shined as she endeavored to give him a reassuring smile. "There has to be, Bill. There has to be! This can't really be all that there is! Life can't be that cruel. The gods can't be that cruel! We can't really have waited all of our lives to find one another only to lose each other like this!"

He shook his head at her naivety. Was she really that blind? Didn't she see? "If your gods really did exist how else could you describe them? Haven't you learned anything from these past few years? Your gods are nothing but cruel!"

"Bill-"

He didn't want to be attacking her and her beliefs, but she had to be made to see. Two months versus a year? How was there even a question in there?

"Something will come along. It always does. A lot can happen in a year's time, Laura. I'll talk to the Agathons –"

Squeezing her eyes shut, she didn't let him finish. "Bill, you know that Hera's blood wouldn't work now. It was the undifferentiated whatever of the fetal blood."

"Then I'll talk to them about having another baby!"

She just stared at him.

He had to make her see reason. "There are so many cylons in the fleet now, Laura. Other cylon/human couples are bound to happen. There will be more hybrid babies – you just have to give it time."

She shook her head. "Bill, you don't even know that it would work a second time. It didn't even work a first time. Not really. The cancer wasn't cured. It came back!"

"It bought us two extra years. So we repeat it every two years." Bill shrugged. It was hardly ideal, but he didn't really see a problem with that. "I'll take my cures two years at a time!"

He watched her put her head down into her hands.

He knew the volume of his voice had been going up each time he spoke. He tried to rein it in. "Maybe there is something that can be done with Saul's baby. I know it's not a hybrid, but if I asked Saul –"

That brought her head up - her expression one of horror. "- Saul would do anything for you, Bill. You wouldn't even have to ask, just suggest it and Saul would do anything for you, but there are risks and it _isn't_ just Saul's baby."

Rather than argue the particulars of it with her, he went back to the abstract. "Laura, in a year's time something will come along. You need to keep fighting and wait for it."

She was growing angry with him. "Bill, I am dying. I am in pain and I am dying. I love you, you know that I do, but I need you to understand that. The treatment, it's prolonging the cancer, it isn't curing it. I _cannot_ keep doing this.

"There are so many pills, Bill. _So many._ I can't even remember all the names anymore. Every morning as soon as I wake up I take eight little white round tablets, six green capsules, and five of these red capsules that are so enormous I don't even think they were originally intended for people. Those all need to be taken on an empty stomach. Then as soon as I manage to keep down something that isn't a pill I have to take four of the half green and half white capsules and then four more of the purple and white capsules. There are _so many_ pills, Bill. Some mornings I can't manage to swallow them all. And that's just the round in the morning."

That was just her obstinacy. "They don't have to be pill form, Laura. Cottle can put a portacath in for injections instead."

Cottle had been gently trying to suggest surgically inserting a portal with a septum and a catheter connected to a vein for a while now. Mentioning how much quicker and easier it would be on her if they didn't have to find a vein each time she went in for a treatment or blood draws.

She shook her head adamantly. "That's the start of the end, Bill. I remember that with my mother. That's the beginning of being permanently attached to all of the machines that will do the work that my body can't do anymore and I don't want that, Bill. I have never wanted that. That was why I refused the doloxan the first time around.

"I don't want to end up like my mother- just this pitiful creature lying in a bed with no dignity. Too weak to stand, to dress, to feed herself. Needing someone to change my diapers! I don't want that, Bill, and we're going to be getting there! I want to have two months _with you_, not a year as a burden to you."

"Laura, I would relish every extra moment we might have together. How could you even think that I would consider taking care of you as a burden? That I would –" He searched for the words " – resent you for it?"

"_I_ would resent it!"

He wouldn't hear it. "It doesn't matter, Laura. We're not there yet."

"Look at me, Bill." Shrilly, she insisted when he wouldn't. "Look at me! We are getting there, Bill. We are getting there and sooner than you think."

"It's hard, Laura. I know it's been very hard on you, but we can get through this."

Moving from the couch, she kneeled before him resting her hands on his knees. "No Bill, we can't!_ I can't_. There is no getting through it this time! _I'm tired of smelling of sickness and death! I can't do this_!"

Standing, he pulled himself out of her grasp. He couldn't hear her – couldn't listen to what she was asking him to do – to allow to happen. "I can't do what you're asking me to do."

"Don't do this to me, Bill." She was pleading with him.

"_Do you think that I sat in that raptor for show? _ I can't live without you, Laura._"_

Her arms were now resting on the seat he had abandoned. With a slight shake of the head, she turned from him.

Taking advantage of her silence, he persisted. "Laura, we've been down this road before. We can do it again. The past few days have taken a toll on all of us – especially you."

"_Bill this isn't just about the past few days. For the past four years I've been dying. I'm tired_." She didn't say it but he could hear the final two words '_of waiting'._

He could hold back his anger no longer. "That's it? You're just giving up. You're going to surrender?"

"Surrender?" The word came out in a huff that couldn't quite be called amused. "This isn't a battle you or I can win, Bill. This war, it's over! This body, my body, its broken!"

But it wasn't her body that was irretrievably broken – not yet. It was her spirit. Finding that Earth, the thing that everyone - but her most of all - had pinned their hopes and dreams on for the last four years, was nothing but a charred wreck had broken her.

Her struggles the last four years had been with a clear end goal in mind – finding Earth. Now that that had been taken from her in the cruelest way imaginable she was rudderless.

The one good thing that had come out of the mutiny was the reigniting of her fire. When he had heard her voice, her words coming over the com right before reentering the CIC, he had known everything was going to be all right - not because he was retaking his ship but because she had regained her spark. However it seemed that its return had been short lived.

When she had thought him taken from her, she had been willing to fight Zarek and Gaeta to the bitter end. She just needed to put that same spark into this fight against her cancer. If he could get her to do that, they could get through this. He knew they would.

"_Something_ will come along!"

Moving to stand in front of him, she put a hand on his chest and spoke of the hope that neither had dared to speak of when it had still been alive. "_Earth was supposed to be that something, Bill. We both know that_."

More than just a place to settle the fleet, Earth had been the something they had been hoping would come along for use in combating her cancer. With the discovery of the vestiges of Earth's civilization, gone was the hope that the lost thirteenth colony might hold the knowledge of a cure for her cancer.

"Bill, it didn't work out. There isn't going to be a something this time. You have got to face that."

He refused to accept it. If Earth wasn't going to be their something, he would make something else their something. "Everyone has to have something to fight for. You're my something. Why can't I be your something?"

"Oh Bill, you are my something!"

He said it every bit as bitterly as he felt it. "But it's not enough. _I'm not enough_."

"Bill, I watched my mother die for two years. The pain, the body aches, the nausea, the chills, the tremors... Two years of doloxan and radiation and every other treatment the doctors could come up with. I want to be with you, Bill. _Really with you._ I would rather have two months of _us_ than two years of _that_."

She had both hands on his chest. "Bill, think about it. Two months of having the strength and the energy to make love to you the way I've always longed to. Two months of really being together. Two months of actually being able to enjoy a meal with you - not just trying to choke some small bit of sustenance down without the nausea bringing it right back up. Two months of curling up together on the sofa with a book during your off duty hours – not you switching shifts with Saul so you can sit on the floor of the head with me after one of my treatments because you're afraid of what you'll find when you get back if you leave me alone.

"I want two months of falling asleep in your arms and waking up there. Not a year of living in a hospital bed with my immune system so weak I have to be confined to a section of sickbay.

"I'm not completely abdicating my position as President – just giving up all the scut work to Lee. And I know you'll still have your responsibilities, but we could use those two months to really spend time together in a way we've never been able to before because of all of our obligations. It's time we could use to learn all those things about each other that there's never been time for before. I want that with you so much, Bill. Having those two months with you.

He shook his head. "I don't want two months." Two months wasn't nearly long enough. "I want a lifetime." He wouldn't settle for anything less.

She persisted. Taking his hands, she pressed them to her face and smiled. "Bill, I've always wanted to feel your hands in my hair. Two months of growth wouldn't be much, but there would be some." She reached a hand to finger his hair and smiled at him wistfully. "It might even get to be as long as yours."

He wouldn't admit it to her, not until she was healthy again and her hair long and full, but he too had always wanted to feel his hands in her gorgeous locks of hair.

She was vain - not overly, but more than a little bit. Though she had tried to hide it, he knew that of all the changes and challenges brought on by the return of her cancer and the aggressive treatment to combat it the one that she had grieved the most was the loss of that exquisite hair. He never mentioned it, and he didn't know where, but he knew that she had kept all the strands that had fallen out unwilling, unable to actually dispose of them. If the day ever came that he did have to lose her, even if he could survive the immediate loss, he knew that coming across that wherever she hid it would kill him.

The want, the need in her eyes – he wanted to give in to it, but he knew he couldn't.

He went back to his battle cry. _"Something_ will come along. It always does."

She put her head down, resting her forehead on his chin.

"Do this for me, Laura."

"Bill, don't ask this of me."

"I'm asking."

"Bill –"

He put his hands on either side of her face lifting her eyes to meet his gaze, keeping her from leaning into him. "I'm asking."

"Bill –" He couldn't give in to the pleading in her eyes. He just couldn't. Not with what was at stake.

She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let go. He didn't let go until closing her eyes, she gave a slight nod.

He kissed her on the temple before moving towards the handset. "I'll call Cottle. Tell him we're coming right now."

She shook her head. "Not right now. I'll call him. I'll make the appointment, but not right now."

He had the advantage now, but he knew it might only be momentarily. He needed to press it. "We can go now. Saul is already covering my shift in CIC."

"We have a meeting tomorrow with Lee and Romo Lampkin to get things started for installing Lee as vice president and putting together the plans for a new Quorum. I need to be coherent for that. I'll talk to Cottle this afternoon. I'll schedule a treatment for after the meeting."

He knew he was badgering her. "You can call him right now."

"He was getting ready to operate on Anders as I was leaving."

Sam Anders. For better or worse, Kara's husband. Bill sighed wearily. Why did all of their lives have to be filled with such loss?

Unrelenting, Bill insisted. "But you will call him later? You'll make the appointment?"

She gave a slight nod. "Right now I want you to lay with me, Bill." She gestured to the book still in his hand. "We're almost to the end. I want to finish our book together."

Pulling her close again, he spoke of his feelings for her as he often did – through books. "It's my favorite. I don't want it to end."

A hand again in his hair, she gently chided him. "Bill, there are only a few chapters left."

Kissing him on the cheek, she took him by the hand, trying to coax him to his rack. "Come. I want to lie in your arms, close my eyes and just take in the sound of your voice."

He met her halfway.

Veering to the bookcase, he put _Searider Falcon_ on its side on the shelf and reached for another book – any other book.

_tbc_

A/N As always reviews are greatly appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3_

_Baltar_

Her eyes were closed. Her breathing imperceptible for its shallowness and the angle at which she was laying on the couch. Until she spoke, he wasn't entirely sure one way or the other. Preferring the unknowingness, he had just remained there watching.

He was the destroyer of worlds having very nearly singlehandedly brought their species to the brink of extinction. She was the savior. For good or ill, had she not done what she had that first fateful day - gathering together the band of ships – the food processing ship, the two mining ships, the recycling ships, the two – now one – tylium refinery ships, and the freighters of various supplies, they never could have survived for as long as they already had. Even Galactica as self sufficient as it was needed to be periodically refueled and resupplied.

God created everything in opposites. Together they formed some sort of cosmic balance. What was to become of him without her?

"We lost so much of ourselves with the destruction of the colonies. Billions of lives, most of our books, our music, our art, our culture, our entire way of life, but sometimes it's the little things that I miss the most. The niceties. Like knocking."

It wasn't something that the others – outside of Doctor Cottle – would notice. The Admiral and his people were used to sudden death – gunshots and vipers crashing. This was something far more insidious. It was in the ever so slight thickening of her voice. Her lungs were filling with fluid.

That terrible day when he had first met her, she had claimed to have already met him. A symposium on Caprica. Had he really met her once before and forgotten her? It seemed impossible to believe that anyone who met her could ever hope to forget Laura Roslin. Then again it also seemed improbable that they had only met the once given some of the circles they traveled in common in Caprica City.

The change from her appearance on the baseship couldn't have been more dramatic. There she had been brilliant. By the pure force of her personality, she had kept the cylons from abandoning the fleet. Here she looked dull, dying.

Here she was dying.

All alone.

It angered and saddened him.

There hadn't been anyone waiting outside to stop him so he had tried the hatch. It wasn't locked, but that didn't surprise him. He had taken advantage of the then Commander's habit of leaving his quarters unguarded and unlocked once before at the start of their voyage of the damned.

Watching her finally open her eyes, but make no attempt to rise to a sitting position, he thought it just as well that it wasn't locked. If it were, he doubted that the room's sole occupant would have been able to make it across the room to unlock it and Baltar wasn't entirely sure that there was a way to unlock it from the outside. He didn't see a mechanism and knowing what little he did about military ideals of honor and conduct, it wouldn't exactly surprise him to discover that the door wasn't intended to be secured while unoccupied.

With blow torches or small explosives – if they dared – he wondered how long would it take to get the door off of its hinges if it were locked?

Too long, he knew. So near was the end.

Blinking back tears, his voice was hoarse as he chastised those not there. "They shouldn't have left you alone in here. Someone should be here with you. Watching you ..."

_Die._

He could tell that she knew what he had meant, but – "I assure you, the Admiral is not concerned that I am going to steal anything."

"No, I dare say that's not what he's afraid of." She already had hold of what was most precious to the Admiral and was shortly - very shortly - to take off with it.

Playing along, he backtracked. "I meant …shouldn't there be marines outside? For your protection."

"Why? Am I in need of protection?" She arched an eyebrow. "Have you come here to kill me?"

Offering her an uneven smile, Baltar wagged a finger in her direction. "No."

"You may have noticed we're a little short staffed at the moment. Rather than have two marines guard just me, they are at either end of the hall guarding the entire corridor. Apparently they failed to perceive you as a threat."

Gaius had recognized the marine that he had passed in the hall. Semi regularly the young man attended the gatherings that Gaius held. Too ashamed to do more, Gaius had exchanged only a brisk nod as he passed on his way to the Admiral's quarters.

Her words to him came out so acerbic. She didn't like him. She found him contemptible. She thought him useless. A waste of the resources of which they had precious few left. She had made that more than clear on the baseship.

"If you haven't come to kill me, then what have you come for?"

"Where is the Admiral?" Gaius wondered aloud. He really should be here.

"We have a meeting in the wardroom in a few minutes. He needed to stop by the CIC first. If you hurry you might be able to catch him somewhere between the two."

It was a dismissal.

He remembered from his tenure as President the unending string of meetings with the whining, sniveling utterly ungrateful populace. "Ah so would this meeting be for the voicing of union complaints, civilian complaints, religious complaints, or military complaints?"

He knew it couldn't be for Quorum complaints.

Perhaps the two of them weren't exactly opposites, he realized. After all, they did have some things in common. Both had spent most of their respective presidencies in a haze of pharmaceuticals. True, his was self medicating to cope with the pressure and the tedium while hers were considered medicinal, but still …

"We're meeting with Lee and Romo Lampkin to go over their draft of a plan for a new Quorum elected by ship instead of colony. And before we do that, we need to get Lee officially installed as my new vice president. I want him to begin taking over most of the day to day operations. I don't have a lot of time left."

There were, Gaius realized listening to her talk, understatements and then there were understatements.

"What time I do have I don't want to waste on bureaucracy. I want to spend it with Bill."

"If you want to spend what time you have left with him, why aren't you with him? Why isn't he here?"

A look of irritation settled over her features.

"As I already said, he had a meeting in the CIC. I didn't feel the need to stand around in the CIC for half an hour for a meeting I didn't need to be a part of. I'm not planning to follow him around like a puppy. I said I want to spend time with him. I didn't say I expected to spend _every_ second with him."

Gaius thought it more likely that she doubted she _could _stand around the CIC for half an hour.

"Now you know where the Admiral is. Go find him."

"I wasn't looking for the Admiral. I was looking for you."

She sighed in exasperation. Grimacing, she shook her head. "No longer having to be exposed to you on a daily basis, I'd almost forgotten how much trouble you have carrying on a coherent conversation."

Yes, he supposed as he rambled aloud, he could see how his repeatedly asking where the Admiral was could give her the impression that he was looking for him.

"I tried _Colonial One_ first but you weren't there. Everyone there was ever so helpful." He added facetiously. "No one would tell me where you were. After the little display you and the Admiral put on the other day I made an educated gu-"

She interrupted him. "Is there something that you want, Gaius?"

Only her eyes moved to follow him as he traveled about the room nervously. "I feel that I can be of …" Baltar broke off. "That is to say … I want to be … of use." He said the words again, this time with the emotion that he felt. "I want so _desperately_ to be of use."

Casually, she asked. "Do you have another cure for my cancer?"

Baltar stared for a moment. His expression tightened. "No." He cleared his throat. "No, I'm afraid I haven't."

She seemed unmoved by his display. She spoke so cuttingly. "Then Doctor, you are of no use to me."

He nodded and smiled apologetically.

He should leave. He wasn't welcome here. He wasn't wanted. He _should _go. But he didn't.

Baltar waved his hand expansively. "How long has _this_ been going on?"

Such a contrast – this time her words came out almost tenderly. He had no illusions that the tenderness was for him. "Not long enough."

By her deflection he realized it was a bit too personal a question.

He wondered why it was that she had yet to demand he leave. It was because, he realized, she lacked the force to implement such a command if he were to refuse. She didn't appear to have the strength to get to a sitting position never mind escort him to the door. And there were no marines outside the door for her to call upon to do it for her.

He smiled tightly. He was surprised to find himself shaking. He would never have expected himself to be this emotional over her death.

Here she was trying to be stoic and refuse the situation they were in, but he couldn't.

His wonder brought the words out in almost a whisper. "You're dying. Aren't you afraid?"

"Afraid?" She repeated the word as if it were a curiosity. "No, not really. I've been dying for the greater part of the last four years. To cancer, to cylons, to New Caprica, to cylons on New Caprica, to cancer again … It's old hat by now. I've accepted it. What's been harder for the past few months is living. _Everything _hurts. Things aren't working the way they're supposed to anymore."

He wasn't sure if the movement of her hand was intentional or a tremor.

"No, I think at this point I'm ready – for the most part."

"For the most part?" he repeated.

She wasn't looking at him anymore. "It's just that there are so many things unfinished."

"Things unsaid." Gaius offered while taking the seat across from her.

"No," she gave a slight shake of the head. "I've said what I need to say to those whom I needed to say them."

"Then what?"

She inhaled slowly, thoughtfully. "I worry about Bill. Personally and professionally. Leaving him all alone to deal with this. I worry about the fleet, the people. What is to become of them? Maybe you hadn't noticed but that whole Earth thing didn't exactly work out the way it was supposed to."

No, they weren't opposites Gaius realized contemplating her. They weren't merely alike either. They were the same – her and him. It was just that they lived in a cycle of sorts – taking turns playing the same parts.

First she was the president and the prophet. Then for a time he was the president while she - abandoned by her people and stripped by him of both the office of the president and the cancer that designated her as the one foretold in the scriptures - she was no more than just a disgraced former president who had tried to rig an election. Then as he abandoned her people on and to New Caprica he took his turn as the disgraced former president while she again ascended to the presidency. With the return of her cancer, she took back up the mantle of prophet, but somehow along the way he too had become a prophet.

Though still president, Earth's discovery had ended her tenure as prophet in ignominy and having abandoned his flock he was simply a disgrace.

"One fraud to another, the prophecies say that the dying leader will lead the people to the Promised Land, but the leader never gets to see the Promised Land. If you believe in the prophecies then Earth wasn't the Promised Land. It can't have been. You're still alive. Maybe all that is holding us back from finding Earth is your death."

"So what you are saying is that if I would just hurry up and die you people could come across the wonderful utopia we've all been waiting for." She looked at him slightly amused. "Are you sure you aren't here to kill me?"

"No." He put his head down. "I just thought it might give you some comfort to know."

The phone rang. It was out of her reach. As she stared to try to rise to get it, he stopped her. "Allow me."

"Admiral's quarters. Gauis Baltar speaking. How may I direct your call?"

Not what the party on the other line had been expecting. In the beat that person lost, Gaius listened to Laura's laughter.

"I know you said you wanted to be of use, but this is ridiculous."

Too loud and too high, he let out a laugh of his own.

That was how they found them, the two – one very chagrined looking - marines who swung the hatch open. With their guns trained on him, one marine questioned her. "Everything all right, Madam President?"

The other marine was having a conversation with someone not there. Gaius suspected that unlike when he had conversations with someone not there, the someone the marine was talking to actually did exist somewhere. The Admiral's beat hadn't been lost – it had just been spent elsewhere.

At the President's nod, they lowered their firearms.

"We'll be right outside the hatch if you need anything, Madam President."

Leaving the hatch open, true to their word, they took up post just outside it.

Gaius had almost forgotten the phone in his hand.

_"This is the Admiral. Tell the President we await her in the wardroom."_

"Ah yes." Gazing her way, Baltar made an executive decision. "Might I suggest bringing the meeting to Madam President?"

The Admiral lost only a second before agreeing.

"They are on their way here." Baltar reported, replacing the phone in its cradle.

Laura nodded. "If you will excuse me, I need to finish getting dressed."

As Baltar just stood there, she prodded him. "You can leave now."

Watching her effort to rise to a sitting position, he offered, "I can help."

"_Dr. Baltar_." She warned sharply.

"You are already dressed – aren't you? Or is this meeting a black tie event?"

Following her gaze across the room, he realized she referred to her wig.

Crossing to it, he again offered his services. "Allow me."

As she reached up to try to undo the knot holding her scarf in place only one hand would rise high enough to reach. Returning to her side, unbidden he aided her in undoing it. Watching the scarf unfold and trail down after her hand to expose the smooth expanse of skin beneath, he was surprised to find the action to be sensual.

Without the scarf, the wig, or her own hair the features of her face seemed much more prominent. The green of her eyes was overwhelming. The gauntness of her frame reminded him of some of the models he had been with on Caprica.

He had saved her life once – but not really – with his last minute cure that apparently didn't really cure. She had saved his life once – but not really – by putting back on the bandages she had stripped off in an effort to let him bleed to death.

They were one and the same.

It seemed wrong that they had never been one.

Leaning forward, he kissed the side of her mouth.

As she turned to be fully facing him, he moved in to kiss her again. Her expression stopped him.

"What?" Gaius asked.

When she continued to just look at him with that stare of disbelief, he repeated it louder. "What?"

"Are you frakking kidding me? Has the syphilis eaten away _that _much of your brain or did you run out of the meds for your schizophrenia?"

Baltar pulled back. "I'm not schizophrenic."

To her look of skepticism, he insisted. "I'm not!"

Years ago, he had made Cottle run test after test on him seeking to find some explanation for the woman who haunted his mind.

"Really – I'm not! If I were it would have shown up. In brain scans, a schizophrenic's brain shows decreased activity in the frontal cortex. A few years ago I had the good doctor do scans of my brain. He couldn't find anything."

"Nothing at all?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. "Can't say I'm surprised." She added with a titter of laughter.

"There's no need to be rude!"

Affronted, he placed the wig on her head more carelessly than he might otherwise have. He had to brush a number of strands aside with his hand to get them off her face.

Having put the wig in place, he realized how right she had been about not having been fully dressed. The hair helped to fill out her face – to mask her illness.

Still, he found he was so preferential towards her own hair that he preferred nothing to this travesty.

"Do you know that when I was your vice president I used to fantasize about you?"

He felt her stiffen, pulling slightly away. He tried to assuage her with an unflattering truth about himself. "Don't feel too special. There isn't a woman onboard this ship that I haven't fantasized about at one time or another."

She turned to regard him with a raised eyebrow but he thought also a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

Fingering the faux hair, he continued. "You used to have the softest, most luxurious hair. At every opportunity in our meetings I used to move to be standing behind you, leaning over your shoulder – presumably to look at the papers in front of you – but really to take in the scent of your hair."

"And to think all that time, I thought you were just trying to look down my blouse." She replied drolly.

"That too." Gaius admitted before going on to rhapsodize about_ her_ hair some more. "Whenever I would fantasize about us, invariably it would involve wrapping those glorious locks around my -" stopping short, he tried to recover, "- hand."

She was staring at him again.

He cleared his throat. "Yes, I would wrap it around my _hand_."

The look she was giving him was not at all kind.

Gaius offered something close to an apology. "That was a bit too much information, wasn't it?" He managed to look almost chagrined.

"When the hair fell out, I saved it. I kept it all in a box on Colonial One. Shall I have it sent to you when I am gone?"

He responded without thinking. "Yes, that would be much appreciated."

With a look of defeat, he closed his eyes.

Trying to get away from _that _conversation, he asked. "But if you still have it, is there a reason you couldn't have a wig made of it?"

Seeing her grin and try to hold back laughter, he realized how that could be taken. "I didn't mean… It's just I don't particularly care for the wig that you have now."

"You don't know when to quit, do you Doctor?"

Watching her double over in laughter, he put his head down in his hands.

Why was it that with her, things just never quite seemed to work out the way he wanted them to?

_tbc_


	4. Chapter 4

_Curtain call_

_Chapter 4_

His father had mentioned - warned - that Baltar had answered the phone. Baltar was still here and it didn't look like he had plans to leave.

"If it pleases her majesty, I should like to remain. Observe the changing of the guard as it were." Baltar offered a sweeping bow as he said it. As he raised his head, he had a look in his eyes that Lee couldn't quite place.

"Mmm." Not quite completely recovered from the fit they had found her in, the President giggled as she nodded her acquiescence.

Lee stared as she rose to move past him. When she stumbled and grabbed his arm to steady herself, he told himself it was her still ongoing fit of laughter that made her stagger. Her lips met his ear as she pulled him closer to half whisper, half giggle to him. "When I'm dead, whatever you do, don't let him alone with the body."

Looking for some explanation, Lee tilted his head to meet her eyes, but his father already had her in his grasp, guiding her to a spot at the table.

Once they were all settled and seated – as always his father between Lee and the President - skipping the pleasantries, Lampkin started right in. "I think people will get behind the idea of representation by ship instead of by colony easily enough. In my opinion, the hard sell is going to be Lee as Vice President and eventual President.

"Lee is the only surviving Quorum member." His father pointed out.

"Yeah about that –" Romo started to say something, but then seemed to think better of it. " –Let's get back to that part in a minute and for the moment focus on a few other facts. Like that he's an Adama and he was never actually elected by anyone."

"I was never elected either and look how that turned out." The President responded dryly as she shifted in her seat. Despite the concessions they had made for her, she seemed to be having trouble getting comfortable.

Lampkin smiled unpleasantly at her. "That's cute. No really, that's cute. Being snide that's always so helpful."

Lee noticed his father seemed to be in a hurry. "Let's move this along."

Romo tipped his head in a gesture of acquiescence before starting again. "Everyone please try to remember as I speak that I am on your side and I know this not to be true, but I am trying to give you the view from another perspective. While _I_ agree Lee is the right choice, the only choice – I'll remind you all he was my choice first – he is still an Adama. Thanks to the manifesto written by a certain person in this room –"

Lee's eyes flicked to Baltar who didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. He didn't seem to have reacted to the words at all. All he did was continue to stare at the President with that look that Lee couldn't decipher. As Lee brought his own gaze back to the still speaking Lampkin, he could tell by the narrowing of Romo's eyes and the way they darted back and forth from Baltar to the President that Lampkin was seeing it too.

"- it may not sit very well with some people to have one Adama in charge of the military and another heading up the government."

"Lee won't be heading the government." His father interjected. "Laura will still be the President. The office of the vice president will just be taking on more duties for the time being. People will have plenty of time to adjust to the transition."

"No doubt." There was an edge to Lampkin's response that Lee suspected he – as the one to have had the most dealings with Romo - was the only one to detect.

"The President might want to consider moving back to _Colonial One_ for a time." Lampkin suggested.

"No." was the immediate response from his father.

"It would show a more healthy division between –"

"I said no. What's next?"

"Admiral –"

"- The President is restarting her doloxan treatments this afternoon. She will be remaining aboard the _Galactica_. End of discussion."

"Would _Madam President_ care to chime in?" Eyes locked on Lee's father, Romo paused, waiting for a response from the President.

None came.

Noticing the break, they all turned to look - Lee leaning forward to see past his father.

Her eyes were closed. She was asleep.

Feeling embarrassed and for some reason he couldn't explain angry, Lee looked away as he prodded her sharply, if only verbally. **"Madam President."**

"Mmm. Sorry, I was just resting my eyes. Keep going."

"We're done here. The President is tired."

"Bill, I'm fine. Continue."

Lee listened to his father – himself sounding tired – try and fail to persuade her. "Laura, you're tired. It's been a rough few days. We can pick this up later."

"I'm fine." She insisted. "You were saying?"

Lee looked to his father. At his nod, he continued. "We will need to address the people's concerns."

"Don't think I didn't see that." She scolded them both.

"Are you planning a fleet wide address to announce this?" Lampkin asked the question, but allowed no time for a response. "Because I think how you go about making the announcement is going to be very important. I think it key that the Admiral _not_ be in attendance." As an after thought, he added. "Oh and no marines."

Said Admiral was quick to counter. "The President doesn't go anywhere without a marine detail."

After the Quorum, Zarek had had slaughtered any of the President's very loyal personal guard that had the misfortune to be aboard _Colonial One_.

Lee watched Romo's eyes keep shifting from Baltar to the President. What wondered Lee was Lampkin seeing that Lee wasn't?

Lampkin spoke slowly and deliberately as if he were selecting each of his words carefully.

"The last time most of the people of this fleet saw Laura Roslin was during the broadcast of Baltar's trial. She was vibrant and healthy. Since then she's spent most of her time sequestered on _Galactica_. She relocated – was relocated – it all looks the same from the outside of the _Galactica._"

Entirely unsure of what it was that Lampkin was trying to say, Lee just stared at him. When none of the others seemed to pick up on it either, Lampkin tried again.

"Before the start of the mutiny - _right_ before the start of the mutiny - some rumors began circulating around the fleet – no doubt started by Tom Zarek, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. The rumors concerned whether or not the sudden decline in the President's health might be being caused by something other than the return of her cancer."

"What are you getting at?" His father demanded.

"I fear that … some people may see this as a plot against President Roslin. That she may be being coerced."

A grunt was his father's only response.

"There are people who may see it as quite the coincidence that Lee, your son, was the only Quorum member to survive the massacre on _Colonial One_. It was a bit fortuitous – wouldn't you agree?"

"What?" Lee couldn't help but feel more than a little blindsided. Despite all the hours he and Lampkin had put in together drafting a plan for a Quorum based by ship, this was the first he was hearing of any of this. "What are you implying? I survived because I wasn't on board. As soon as I saw Zarek on _Colonial One_ I knew right away that something wasn't right. There was no way that my father would have let him out of the brig after the stunt he pulled with the tylium ship."

"So you knew something was wrong, but you left."

"Yes." Lee admitted.

"Did you tell anyone?" Romo asked. "That something was wrong?"

"I tried calling my father from _Colonial One_ but Gaeta wouldn't put through my call. That's why I left _Colonial One - _to get to _Galactica_ to warn my father."

"Before leaving did you tell anyone _on Colonial One_ that something was wrong?"

"I … I ..." Lee stuttered trying to remember the exact sequence of events.

Unwilling to wait, Lampkin went forward. "So you left _Colonial One _right before a couple of _Galactica's _marines went in and started massacring people? As I said fortuitous."

"I don't care for what you're suggesting." Lee shot back angrily. "As soon as I landed on _Galactica_ I had a gun stuck in my face – several in fact. If it wasn't for Kara, I_ would_ be dead."

"But you're not. And here you are getting quite the promotion. From a nobody to a seat on the Quorum to Vice President in just a few short months? Ever thought about writing a book yourself, Lee? Maybe offer up some career advice for the rest of us? Because you always seem to get the promotions. Exactly how many more experienced, better qualified people did you leapfrog to go from flyboy to commanding your very own battlestar?"

Words escaping him, Lee shook his head in disgust not just at Lampkin, but at his father and the President, neither of which seemed to have anything to say to defend him.

"Of course a tell all book might not be such a good idea. Now's not exactly the time to be reminding people about what happened the last time daddy gave you the keys to the car."

Changing tack completely, Lampkin went on. "Zarek was popular. Zarek was always popular. The Admiral here may not have liked him or trusted him, but clearly other people did – including people in this room when it suited their needs. "

Lampkin pointed at Lee. "You were pretty buddy buddy with him not so long ago. Wasn't Zarek the one who got you appointed to the Quorum vacancy?" And she -" Though his gaze was still on Lee, Lampkin gestured to the President "- she went on quite the jolly holiday with him to Kobol."

Lee sputtered, but could make no words come out.

Lampkin had no such problems. "Zarek had a way of ingratiating himself with people, people who count. It's how he almost got elected to the Vice Presidency instead of Baltar the first go around. And I have to wonder if that's why or part of why we never went through all the bother of a trial for Zarek, _Admiral_."

Lee was glad to see Lampkin finally turn his penetrating gaze elsewhere.

"That you feared he would once again manage to prove too slippery to be pinned."

His father finally spoke. "There was a court-marshal."

"Really?" Lampkin asked. "I must have missed that. When was that exactly? Because I can't seem to recall being called in to testify. Must have slipped my mind."

"Given the overwhelming evidence your testimony wasn't necessary."

"I see." Lampkin nodded. "And the bit with the jury? Was that unnecessary too? Because I don't seem to recall seeing any ship captains gadding about either."

His father tugged at the bottom of his worn uniform tunic, straightening it. "As a flag officer in a time of war I am authorized to serve as the sole magistrate."

"That's fine for Gaeta, but Zarek was a civilian." Lampkin pointed out.

"The President signed an order authorizing a tribunal of six to try Zarek for his crimes."

Lee found it quite fitting that Zarek's own execution had been authorized by the same type of secret tribunal that Zarek had used on the collaborators from New Caprica.

"Justice." Grimacing, Lampkin shook his head and proclaimed. "It's all just window dressing to you people isn't it?"

"Sorry, I'm a little unclear here." Lee admitted. "So are you suggesting that my father and I staged our own coup _after Zarek's _or that there was no mutiny? Because the President addressed the fleet during the mutiny! She spoke out against Gaeta and Zarek, _in support_ of my father using Baltar's wireless transmitter and again from the raptor she used to escape. And hours later everyone heard her arguing with Zarek on the comm. It was an unsecured line!"

Romo pointed out some of the particulars. "Addresses she made from aboard a cylon baseship – the same baseship which had already kidnapped her once."

"She didn't address the fleet from the cylon baseship the first time." Pointing at Baltar, Lee corrected him. "She did it from his little love nest."

Lee still wasn't sure why it was that Baltar was here. The other man had said not a word since they had sat down. All he did was stare at the President.

"Really?" Lampkin feigned surprise. "See I didn't realize that because my transmitter doesn't tell me where transmissions are coming from. It just transmits them.

"What I'm saying -" Lampkin continued. "- is that there has been, is now, and always will be a great deal of confusion for the people outside of _Galactica_ about exactly what goes on aboard this ship.

"Only ten ships followed the President's directive to shut down their FTL drives. Did Gaeta have twenty-five ships that were willing to jump with him? Or were the captains of twenty-five ships scared witless? There was a lot of confusion and the general order is for ships to always keep their FTL drives spooled up and ready, but I think we have to consider the possibility of another revolt when this goes public. There are going to be people who see this as another military coup. Madam President, you will have to be the one to make the announcement. Have you considered what I suggested earlier - making the announcement from _Colonial One_?"

As he spoke, Lampkin had been doing his usual grandstanding. Finally pausing to allow the President to answer, Lampkin looked to her. Lee saw him grimace.

The President had been uncharacteristically quiet in all this. Taking his eyes off of Lampkin, Lee discovered why.

Motioning for everyone else to pack up and leave, his father spoke quietly so as not to disturb her. "It's been a long couple of days. We can meet again tomorrow to finish this discussion and get a formal press release prepared."

"Of course. The events of the last few days would take a lot out of anyone." Romo readily agreed in words, but the scrapping sound he made as he found what had to be one of the few inches of metal decking not covered in rugs and pushed his chair back to stand caused her to jerk awake. Removing her glasses, the President rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

His father shot Lampkin a dark look for his lack of consideration but as he turned to the President everything about him softened.

"We're going to meet again in a few days to finish this."

She shook her head. "Keep going. We finish this now." Her tone left no room for question.

His father tried anyway. He moved to her side and helped her to her feet. "Laura –"

"We finish it now!"

Romo kept his gaze on the President as he spoke. "Let's just have a few more minutes,_ can we_? Let's set up a press conference for today. _For right now._ It doesn't have to be anything too long or fancy. The President can read a prepared statement. Maybe take a question or two and then turn the event over to Lee for further questions. I'll draft the press statement myself. The President can read it over, make any changes she likes."

Lampkin said it again. "Let's just have a few more minutes."

When his father didn't argue, the others returned to their seats – Lampkin a bit too eagerly, but the President did not. Leaving her glasses behind, she left the table. Both turning in their seats to do so, Lee and his father watched her take a seat on the couch behind them instead.

With the change in seating arrangement, Lampkin's eyes could finally stop shifting. Sitting across from the two Adamas, his view of the President was obscured. Only Baltar - seated to the side - was left with a still clear line of sight to the President.

Lampkin's pen was hurriedly scritch scratching across the paper.

"I'll put a call in to tell the press to be prepared for a press conference shortly." Lee offered.

"That's good. That's a good idea." Lampkin was addressing Lee, but every time he glanced up – which was all too often - he looked at Baltar.

"How soon do you think you'll have something?"

"Soon." Lampkin assured him. "I'm just jotting down a few things for the President to say. A couple of talking points – if you will. She'll do her bit and then we throw you to the wolv-."

With a look of frustration, Lampkin threw his pen onto the table.

"What?" Lee asked. Lee turned to follow Lampkin's gaze in time to see a second tear escape and follow down the trail of the first one down Baltar's face.

As it had been throughout the whole meeting, Baltar's gaze was fixed in the direction of the President. Lee turned to follow his gaze.

"Are you sure you are up for this, Laura?" Still looking at the papers before him, his father called to her a second time. "Laura?"

His father was still facing away from her. "Let's do this in a few days. She needs to rest before her doloxan treatment."

Closing the folder on his sheaf of papers, the Admiral turned in his chair. "Laura?"

His voice was quieter full of apprehension as he saw what Lee saw – her eyes were open staring ahead.

He called her name again. "Laura?" Stumbling from his chair, he moved toward her and lowered himself to be kneeling before her. His hand trembled as he ran his fingers along the side of her face.

"Laura." Again he spoke her name, but this time there was no question in it – just disappointment and sorrow. Slowly, his hand rose upwards to close her eyes.

Still kneeling, he laid his head in her lap. "Oh Laura!"

_tbc_


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Laura looked at the people at the table. At the man that she had come to know and love so well. It was hard to believe they had only known each other for four years.

For so long she had put everything she had, everything she was into the preservation of the human race. Hearing Tom say those vile words – _Bill Adama was tried and found guilty of his crimes. A firing squad executed him this morning_ -it had all come undone. She had come undone. She had been completely prepared to fire on and destroy the _Galactica_ – to sacrifice all the people on it. To take away the fleet's defender. All to ensure that Zarek and Gaeta were punished. To ensure that no one else would ever have Bill's ship.

Bill had been right about the need for them to keep boundaries, to focus on their responsibilities and retain their objectivity. But it was too late to go back now. They were both too far gone.

She tried to remember when it was that she had first realized that she loved him. If she had to hazard a guess, she would have to say it was right after meeting Admiral Cain. Over drinks in Bill's quarters. She may have loved him before then, but that was when she first became aware of it.

It was hard to not be full of regret for all the time that they had squandered before acting on their feelings, but she had little use for regrets now. Right now she just wanted to be grateful for the time that they had had together and to cherish the time they had left.

Leaving the table to move to this more comfortable seat had been a mistake, but the ache in her back from sitting in the hard chair had become almost unbearable – like so many other of the aches she was experiencing.

Even her eyes hurt. The lights had already been lowered at her request, but even that dimmed light shown too brightly for her. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes to shield them from the light, but she couldn't.

She needed to focus, to keep her mind on the conversation, but she kept drifting.

Laura felt rather than heard the presence at her side.

It was one of the things that you got used to as President. Aides were always there. Well almost always. She hadn't taken any into the room with her, but here one was. She refused to turn her head to see who. She needed to focus on what was being said at the table. Already she must have drifted off again at least once since changing seats – she hadn't heard the sound of the hatch opening, yet there was someone else in the room. Laura felt a hand on her shoulder. The aide didn't appear to be willing to be ignored.

"Madam President, your ship is ready to depart."

She couldn't remember ordering a shuttle. She was ready to dismiss who ever it was, but the voice made her turn.

"Billy!"

Her eyes welled up at the sight of him. It was good to see him. _So very good_. But she couldn't quite put her finger on why it was _so_ good to see him.

Putting her hand on his, she smiled. "Just a minute, Billy. We're not quite through here yet."

"They'll take it from here." Billy assured her with a smile.

"Yes," she nodded. "I'm sure that they will be fine here without me."

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure about that, but they'll be what they'll be."

She started to say something. A refusal? A protest for more time? She wasn't sure what – but it caught in her throat and her eyes moved back to the table.

"Madam President, we really should go." Lowering himself to be at her eye level, Billy gently insisted. "Everyone's assembled. They're waiting for you to arrive."

Everyone was assembled? Waiting for her? Laura tried to remember why. Something had been mentioned about giving a press conference from _Colonial One_. That must be it.

But wasn't _Colonial One _docked aboard _Galactica?_ So where was she taking a shuttle to?

She hated to admit it even to herself, but she was a little hazy on exactly what was going on at the moment.

She really ought to question it more, but Billy was one of the few people she would willingly follow anywhere. Billy would never steer her wrong.

Still unable to make more than a sound in her throat, she gave a curt nod and took the arm that Billy offered to help her up.

_tbc_


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6_

_Lee _

"If I could have had one more day!_" _ Romo lamented. "If I could have had _just_ one more day with her! Do you have any idea what I could have done with _just_ one more day with her?!"

Lampkin's words seemed to spark something in his father.

"One more day!" he cried out. "She promised me a year! We were supposed to have a year. Just yesterday she told me! Even without the doloxan we should have had months!"

Lee looked down, averting his eyes from his father's grief and despair.

"Not even a day – _If I could have had just a few more hours with her!_" Romo carried on. "That was all I wanted!"

"No. No!" The Admiral protested. _"We were supposed to have more time. We earned it!"_ He spoke in the rallying tones he reserved for those do or die moments as he rose up from his kneeling position. "_We more than earned it! This isn't right!"_

"Dad -"

Lee watched his father lift the President's limp form with a strength and tenderness Lee hadn't realized him capable of. "I'm taking her to Cottle."

Romo clasped his hands together almost cheerfully and called out. "Right then! I'll phone ahead to make a reservation!"

Not knowing what else to do, Lee ran slightly ahead of his father to clear the path to sickbay. While it would have been more effective, given the circumstance Lee couldn't bring himself to use the phrase usually used by the crew when they needed others to quickly move aside.

Entering sickbay, he found Cottle and several of the medics at the ready with a crash cart. The slight whining sound coming from the machine told Lee it had already been charged up. Cottle even had a loaded syringe in one hand.

Having yet to leave Sam's side, Kara was there too. "Lee! The Old Man –"

Looking confused, Kara stopped as his father made his way in behind him. " It's the President?"

Doc Cottle frowned. "Ishay!"

The medic looked at Lampkin who was pulling up the rear of their little entourage and shook her head. "He didn't tell me it was the President. He said, '_The Admiral is on his way to sickbay. __Have a resuscitation team ready.'"_

"Oh well _I meant_ the Admiral is on his way _with the President_." Romo shrugged with a false cheeriness. "It's all good. You knew to expect us and now you're all ready so chop, chop! Time is a wasting!" Romo tried to urge Cottle to action.

Cottle shook his head. "She has a DNR – a do not resuscitate order."

Lee listened to his father cry out from his spot standing over the gurney he had laid the President down on – the gurney that Cottle and the others had prepared for him. "No!"

Either his father wasn't aware or he just didn't care.

Gone was Lampkin's cheeriness – false or otherwise. "She may have a DNR, but you know what we don't have without her – a government with a clear line of succession and a smooth transition. So unless you liked what you saw the past few days and you want to see more of it, I suggest you temporarily misfile that DNR and do your frakking job."

Lee never thought to hear his father agreeing with Romo Lampkin on anything. "He's right. The Fleet needs her. The people need her. I -"

" - Admiral –"

" - You said we would have more time." His father looked at Cottle accusingly. "You told her we would have months! Even without treatment, you told her we would have months!"

Cottle looked apologetic. "It's not an exact science. Predicting death, it -"

The anguish on his father's face as he interrupted Cottle was almost too much for Lee to look at. " - I want my two months! _We _want our two months!"

Baltar had come along for the spectacle. "Admiral, you have to let her go. This isn't what she wants. Let her die with the dignity that she deserves."

As Baltar tried to put his hands on the Admiral's shoulders in a gesture of comfort, the Admiral pushed him away. "Somebody get him the frak out of here."

Kara was not the only one there visiting Sam. Hesitantly – almost as if afraid that at any moment someone would tell her that she shouldn't be here – Tory approached. They had been so loud since entering, she couldn't possibly have not heard who it was but she still gasped at the sight of Laura Roslin on the gurney. A hand went to cover her mouth, but she didn't utter a word.

"Tick tock people!" As soon as it had become clear that none of the medical staff would do it, Lampkin had begun performing chest compressions on the President. As Kara breathed into the President's mouth, Lampkin kept pushing everyone. "Our little transition hasn't been completed yet. There is no VP. There is no Quorum. We _all_ need the President. So tick frakking tock ladies and gents."

Cottle refused. "I'm not doing it."

"She doesn't want this!" Baltar insisted.

"Just frakkin' do it!" Spit flew from his father's mouth as he shouted.

Cottle threw the syringe onto the nearby tray. "I won't."

For a moment, the room was filled with voices shouting. Everyone in the room seemed to be voicing an opinion about what the President would want so Lee stated what he thought to be true. "Yesterday on _Colonial One_ she told me she wasn't ready to die."

That was all the encouragement his father needed. Lee watched him pick up the syringe that Cottle had discarded and plunge it into the President's chest.

Romo took up the paddles.

"You can't do this! She's ready!" Playing his usual game of trying to make himself part of every spotlight, going beyond mere objection, Baltar tried to throw himself over the President to prevent Lampkin from using the paddles.

Lee watched his father intercept and throw the other man to the floor.

"She wouldn't want this!" Baltar continued.

As Romo used the paddles, the reaction was immediate – both in the room and in the President. The room went silent as the President began to violently convulse.

Ishay spoke first. "The dose is done by weight. That was intended for you, Admiral. You've given her more than twice the proper dosage."

The convulsions weren't stopping.

His father's voice sounded strangled. "Do something! Help her!"

With a look of disgust, Cottle shook his head. "You're the doctor now. You do something."

Helping to hold the President down to keep her from falling off the bed as the convulsions continued, Kara called to Cottle in disbelief. "You can't just leave her like this! Do something!"

The doctor pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He inhaled deeply.

"For gods' sake!" Ishay exclaimed, pushing past Starbuck.

"She was coming back in to restart the treatments today. She made an appointment!" His father's words were a desperate plea – for help, for confirmation, for forgiveness? Lee wasn't sure which.

But puffing on his cigarette, all Cottle had to offer was recriminations. "No, she didn't. And she wasn't going to. And you know that."

"She agreed she would!"

Cottle seemed to be almost wavering – as if he couldn't decide between being sympathetic or fuming. "Admiral, she lied."

Ishay returned with a different syringe. As its contents quickly put an end to the convulsions, the medic began attaching various wires and leads to the President. Solemnly, she announced. "Normal sinus rhythm has been restored."

"Happy now, you selfish bastard?" Lee watched Cottle lashed out at his father. "She's back amongst the living! Now we get to wait and see if what you brought back is animal, vegetable, or mineral! That seizure was likely from her brain being deprived of oxygen!"

Now that the damage had been done or undone, Cottle went back to being the doctor. "How long was she down?"

"Not long." Romo was quick to reply.

When Cottle looked his way, Lee shrugged.

"Was it more than three minutes? Hypoxic brain injury can occur in as little as three minutes."

Lee wasn't sure. In his own feckless way, Baltar had immediately sounded the alarm when she had stopped breathing and the supposed reason for her moving into his father's quarters was it's close proximity to sickbay - still just getting her to sickbay probably took that long. He was still amazed that his father had managed to carry her there at all, never mind how quickly. They didn't call him the Old Man without reason. He wondered if it was adrenalin or if she had lost that much weight with her illness?

His father was still stuck in a more distant past. "She promised me she would make the appointment!"

"When are you going to learn? She lies! She can't be trusted!"

"She told Lee she wasn't ready to die." Desperate, his father turned to him.

Lee repeated what he had said before. "Yesterday, when we were on _Colonial One_ she told me she wasn't ready."

"_Yesterday._" Cottle made a disgusted noise. "When _yesterday? _Was it before or after she signed the DNR order _yesterday?"_

Lee hated himself for the feeling of relief he experienced as Cottle turned his disgust away from him and back onto his father.

His father returned the disgust full force. "_You said_ we'd have more time! _You said_ we'd have months! Maybe even a year!"

His voice full of pity this time, Cottle repeated his own earlier words. "It's not an exact science."

Lee watched as the enormity of what he had just done finally hit his father. He looked down at her in the bed - so pale and helpless - for a mere moment before staggering from the room.

"Dad!" Lee called after him.

"Don't bother." Cottle shook his head. "There's nothing to be done about it now. Now we just wait and see_ if_ she even wakes up."

With that Cottle headed to his office and slammed the door. Lee could hear the sound of things being knocked over.

As those remaining settled in for the wait, the final five cylon who had served for so many years as the President's aide took up her former position at the President's side. Tentatively, she reached out to hold the President's hand.

_tbc_


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7_

Entering their quarters, Bill headed straight for the small closet. He started with the box on the floor that held her scarves. It seemed like the logical place. Like a magician doing a trick, he pulled them out one by one until the box was empty.

As a pair, the heels she refused to part with even though she no longer had the equilibrium to walk in them went out of the closet and onto the floor. One at a time, her bartered running shoes followed only after he had ensured they were empty.

The only other pair of shoes she owned was with her in sickbay.

As he pulled her clothes from their hangers, he checked each piece for pockets before discarding them on the floor.

Turning his back to the closet, Bill surveyed the room for only a moment before heading to the desk. Pulling out a drawer he pawed through the contents briefly before giving the drawer another yank to pull it off of its track. Turning the drawer over to check the bottom, he let the contents fall to the floor. After repeating the same process with all the other drawers, he put his hand into the drawer slots to feel the wood above.

After similarly checking the drawers under the rack, he returned to the desk and welcoming the pain in his back, he heaved it over to recheck the underside.

Papers fluttered to the floor as he upended the table they had so recently assembled around.

Moving to the bookcase, he started off picking the books up one by one and shaking out the pages. Realizing the ridiculousness of that, he started just pulling them out by their spines to drop them on the floor to see if it was hidden behind the books.

Soon he was just swiping whole swaths of books off the shelves with his arm.

From the floor the familiar lettering of one caught his eye. Turning his back to the bookcase, he abandoned his search and slid down to a sitting position.

The first time she was dying he had known it was nearing the end when she had returned to him a gift that he had given her. After her supposed cure, he had given the gift back to her. When she had moved into his quarters and he caught her putting his gift back on the bookshelf with all his other books, he had tried not to see it as the ominous sign that it was. He had tried to see it not as her again returning it - not as the beginning of the end again, but rather as it coming home and bringing her with it.

Now it just lay there taunting him.

Taking it up from the pile, he tried to wrench the pages from their biding.

He found he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Clutching it to his chest, he broke into sobs.

_Dark Day _indeed.

_tbc_


	8. Chapter 8

A/N Warning : This chapter is best appreciated after repeated viewings of the Laura/Lee videos posted on Youtube.

_Chapter 8_

_Lee_

Some time later, Lee could tell that she was close to regaining consciousness by the tightening of her facial muscles. Various parts of her body began to curl in pain.

"Madam President?"

"Mmm." She stirred, but her eyes didn't open.

"Laura? Madam President?" Lee repeated.

She made a pained sound as she took in a breath. "Oh, I must have dozed off again! How much longer until the next jump?"

"You didn't fall asleep – you were dead."

Lee shot the other man a look to shut him up, but she didn't seem to have heard Baltar's words.

"I – we –" Lampkin took hold of Baltar's arm to take him with him "- will go find out where the good doctor got off to after leaving his office."

Kara had never really known what to make of or do with the President and relations between them had hardly improved since Kara had pulled a gun on her. "I'll go find the Old Man and let him know she's awake."

Lee watched the President press her right hand to her chest where the Admiral had given her the injection. Her other hand pulled away from her former aide's tentative grasp and reached for the top of her head. Not finding what she sought, she asked.

"Billy, could you find my glasses? I want to see the report on the tylium ship. How many more jumps do we have left before we start running out of fuel?"

Lee had never heard anyone call his father Billy before. Bill. Commander. The Admiral. The Old Man. A bastard. As a child he remembered his grandfather sometimes calling him William. But Lee had never heard anyone call him Billy before.

Her eyes had yet to open. Lee realized he still never had.

"Madam President …" Lee tried again.

"You're not my Billy." She said it pleasantly enough – almost amused sounding - and it was clearly addressed to Lee, but her former aide recoiled as if struck.

Standing, the cylon left without Laura ever having noticed that she had been there.

Opening her eyes, her gaze fell on him and she smiled. _"Captain Apollo."_

It was a smile he remembered well. It was the one that graced her eyes and encompassed her whole face.

She had smiled a lot more back in the beginning. Back when this was all new and in a horrible kind of way exciting. The world had seemed a little brighter then – to all of them – back when it was only the cylons they were fighting. There had been so much loss back on the Twelve Colonies and they carried it with them always those first few months, but along with their grief, for those who had survived there had been a feeling of exhilaration – for a time at least. Until the bleakness of it all had begun to really set in.

Lee remembered that smile, but it had been so long since he had been the cause of it. He wondered if she ever really smiled like that anymore. If she did, he certainly hadn't seen it. Not since long before he betrayed and denounced her.

She had tried to forgive him. He knew she had tried. For his father's sake, for his sake, for the sake of the fleet, she had tried. She pretended to have quite convincingly, but seeing the affection in her eyes as she looked at him now it was so clear how much he had hurt her.

He wondered if in private she still smiled like that for his father.

What was it about him? What serious personality flaw did he contain that made him covet the women of the other Adama men?

But that wasn't entirely fair in this case. In this case, Lee had loved her first.

Unrequited perhaps and certainly chastely, but he had loved her long before his father had.

But as he had overheard his father say to her on Kobol - when she had wondered why he had come in his condition – why not simply send an emissary – _This is between us. It's always been between us._

And just like that his father had replaced him in her favor. All that had passed between her and the Commander had been forgiven and all that had passed between her and her _Captain Apollo _had been forgotten. He had twice saved her life during the initial attacks. He had not once, but twice mutinied against his father for her. He had taken down the _Olympic Carrier _for her, prevented her assassination, helped her escape from the brig – everything he did, it was all _for her_. He had even taken her to the home of their gods. But all that had been forgotten the first time his father had called her by her given name.

He sometimes asked himself if that was why – or at least part of why – he had done it. Why he had betrayed and denounced her for Gaius Baltar. It hadn't escaped him, the changing of the relationship between the President and the Admiral.

While he had known that the first time she had been taking the Chamilla as a holistic treatment for her cancer and it had had the side effect of producing visions of Earth, he had tried to tell himself that this time she was taking the Chamilla in an attempt to induce more of those visions of Earth. But he had known the truth. If he were to be completely honest with himself, he had known the truth.

And he had wanted to see her grovel before him. To see her debase herself before him, before his father, and before all that was left of their worlds. Under the misnomer of justice, he had stripped her of her armor and left her there, bare for all to see.

But it was _just_ in a way – for she had betrayed him first.

It was like something out of the legends of the gods. Covetous, all powerful Zeus sending another would be suitor off to his death in battle so that he could lay claim to the fair maiden. But in those tales, the maiden in contest had been ignorant. _She_ had been far from ignorant and more than complicit. The idea to assassinate Cain had originated with her.

_She_ had shown him the extent to which she valued the life of his father over his when she – when they – had ordered him and Starbuck to their deaths. Surely even she realized that there was no way the two of them were going to make it off the Pegasus alive after killing the Beast's commanding officer.

So a part of him had relished in it - in betraying her.

It was the same small part of him that - the gods forgive him - had been almost pleased at her cancer's return.

Why should those two get to be happy when no one else around them seemed to be able to? Starbuck was dead or at least at the time he had believed her to be dead. _She_ was with – or getting close to being with – his father. Lee couldn't have either of the women he really loved. Why should anyone else?

And if it meant Earth was getting closer, then all the better.

But he hadn't been expecting this. He hadn't understood what the return of her cancer would really mean for her or for his father.

Losing the woman he loved, having to watch her deteriorate day by day, deteriorating with her … Lee wouldn't wish this fate on his worst enemy – which was ironic in a way because for a not insignificant portion of his life that was what he had felt his father to be.

It hadn't meant much to Lee – not really – because he hadn't had to see it before now. His betrayal of her insulated him in a way. She kept him at a distance now. She treated him as an acquaintance. She didn't let him see the true toll the pain and her illness were taking on her anymore than she let any of the other Quorum members see it. Reserved for him now was the standard forced smile that all the rest of the worlds got to see.

But here, now she was again offering him the genuine article.

And without thinking, Lee did it again. He took that smile away. "Madam President, Billy is dead."

"Oh." The smile left her. "That's right." Her brow took in a slight crease and her gaze moved slightly, no longer focused on him. He almost thought he could see it in her eyes – the succession of emotions as the thousand intervening memories passed through her mind.

She didn't say anything for a minute and he didn't know what to say.

When she again spoke, it wasn't what he expected. "Tell me about your father. What kind of a man is he?"

"I don't understand what you mean?"

"I think the time may be nearing to let the Commander in on my little secret. Can he be trusted?"

Lee tried to follow. It was quickly becoming clear that while the President was still with them, she wasn't all there. "Your secret?"

"About my illness, the cancer. I've held off until now because I fear – I don't want him to see me as weak."

Lee shook his head. Not sure what else to do, Lee offered the truth. "Madam President, I can assure you the Admiral – the Commander has _never_ seen you as weak."

"My position, I mean. As vulnerable. I'd like to think that I know what kind of man the Commander is, but I need to be sure. I believe it to be vital that there continue to be a civilian government. I don't want this to all end with my passing."

Lee assured her. "He won't let that happen, Madam President. _I_ won't let that happen."

She nodded and closed her eyes.

"I don't know how much longer we can keep doing this. Every 33 minutes!" She sighed.

She was fading out again as Cottle approached.

"If you see Billy, ask him to bring me my glasses."

Cottle glanced over the monitors. "She was talking?"

"Yes, but –"

" - How were the words?"

"I – she –"

Cottle clarified his question. " - Did she have any trouble finding the right words or putting them in the right order?"

"No, but –"

" - Did she have any trouble following what you were saying?"

Lee shook his head. "No, not really."

"Did she ever open her eyes?"

"Yes."

"Was she was able to see you, to focus on things in the room?"

Lee shrugged. "I guess. Yes, but -"

Lee stopped, waiting for Cottle's interruption. It didn't come. Satisfied with the answers to his concerns, Cottle finally listened to Lee's. "She seemed confused. Her memory …"

Cottle made a dismissive gesture. "It was most likely the seizure. I'm not going to concern myself with that for the moment."

"You told my father –"

"- Hypoxic brain injury _can _occur in as little as three minutes. That doesn't mean that it will. She had a seizure. The after affects include headache, fatigue, disorientation, and short-term memory loss. She'll need a few hours to recover from the seizure before we know where we stand, but it was most likely the seizure. If there was real brain injury, we would have seen problems with her speech, vision, or breathing - or she wouldn't have woken up at all."

Lee felt his tension starting to ebb away. "So she's going to be fine?"

"No!" Cottle snapped at him. "She's not going to be 'fine.' She has terminal cancer. And now thanks to your father, instead of slipping away quickly and quietly, she is going to die a very slow, very painful death."

Chagrined with himself for his poor choice of words, Lee kept his eyes on the floor until diatribe finished, Cottle again left.

_tbc_

///////////

A/N LOL So is anyone even reading this here?


	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter 9_

_Tory_

_You're not my Billy._

The words were meant for Lee Adama, but it was Tory who felt them. Tory who had always felt them.

Standing in the corridor outside life station, Tory leaned her forehead against a wall of the _Galactica_. It was cold and metal, a machine - like her.

Since finding out that she was one of the five unknown models, Tory had often wondered if Laura Roslin had somehow always known that there was something not quite right with her.

If that was why Laura had never loved her.

On the basestar when Tory had told Laura that she was one of the Final Five she had wanted so _desperately_ to hurt her former mentor. For good or bad to _finally_ succeed in truly _touching_ her.

But after the momentary shock at Tory's revelation there had been nothing because that was what Tory had meant to her. There had been no real sense of betrayal because try though Tory had, she had never made it close enough to be able to _really_ betray her.

Tory had worshiped her. She had tried so hard - doing anything and everything she could think of to please her both when she was the president and even when she was just a teacher on New Caprica. None of it had made a difference. As both the President and Laura, she was appreciative of Tory's hard work and dedication – she even said as much from time to time - but she was also almost always completely detached and professional.

Billy had always made it look so easy.

She used to watch the two of them together – the President and her other aide. Laura with her Billy. The affection between them had been palpable.

At first Tory had thought it simply too soon after her loss of Billy. That the wound was too fresh. She had been willing to respect that – willing to wait her out.

But then New Caprica had happened and if anything - _if anything_ - was going to bring two people closer together surely Tory's attending to her after her every release from detention should have done just that. But it hadn't. If anything, Laura's needing to depend on Tory seemed to make the other woman harden herself off even more against having any real affection towards her.

Tory had been with her more than three times as long as Billy Keikeya had been but nothing Tory could ever say or do was going to get Laura to forgive her for the unpardonable offense of not being Billy.

Pushing away from the wall, Tory smoothed out her hair, her clothes, and finally her expression before leaving life station and the woman in it behind.

_tbc_


	10. Chapter 10

_Chapter 10_

Clutching her daughter tightly in her arms, Sharon approached him. "There are rumors going around the ship."

"There always are." Sherman commented as he let out a puff of smoke.

"People are saying that the Admiral was seen carrying the President through the corridors. That she - that she's dead."

Taking another drag on his cigarette, he gestured to a curtained off area across the way.

Crossing the room, Sharon pulled back the curtain. As she did, she turned Hera to shield her from seeing – or was it from being seen? Cottle wasn't sure which? Having operated unsuccessfully on the woman that Sharon had shot without the slightest provocation, Cottle was aware of just how squirrelly she had become lately and he doubted the recent mutiny had done much to improve her disposition.

Over her shoulder, Cottle could see Lee turn and rise from his seat next to the bed holding the merely sleeping President. Sharon had only a moment to stare before Lee ended the show by reclosing the privacy curtain, but it was long enough to see that the monitors were working.

A bit lacking in the compassion department for someone who had spent about as much time in the brig for murdering an unarmed woman as he had spent in the operating room trying to save the life of that same woman, as Sharon turned back to face him, Cottle dryly offered. "As you can see, rumors of her demise have been slightly exaggerated."

Looking unhappy, but determined, Sharon set Hera down on the gurney before Cottle. Gesturing with her head toward the girl, she spoke through gritted teeth. "Do it."

Her gaze crossed back to the closed curtain. "Do it! Take Hera's blood. Use it to cure her again, but I'm not doing this for _her. _ Helo and I don't owe _her_ a thing. But the Old Man -" Sharon broke off. "-The Old Man has stood by us every step of the way. I'm doing this for him and only him. I don't care if she dies."

Grinding out the stub in his hand, he reached for another. "Sharon, I'm sure the Admiral would appreciate the gesture, but I'm not going to take Hera's blood."

"You have to." Despite her words to the contrary, Sharon didn't look as if she didn't care.

"Sharon, no -"

"_Something is coming._ I know it. I can feel it." Panic seemed to be rising in her the more she spoke. "I've seen bits of it - and so has she. Something is going to happen to Hera."

Cigarette still in his hand unlit, Cottle listened to the desperation in the girl's voice – useless to actually do anything about it.

"She plays a part in it and I don't know what part she plays, but I do know that she wouldn't hurt Hera."

"No, she wouldn't." Cottle agreed.

"She could have killed Hera when she was first born. It would have been cleaner and easier than trying to hide her, but she didn't."

"No, she didn't."

"She had Hera right there with her on New Caprica when the cylons first landed. She could have killed her right then. It would have been the smart thing to do."

"Yes, it would have." Cottle agreed readily, letting Sharon get out all the things she needed to say.

"But she didn't." Sharon continued. "She could have used Hera on New Caprica to save herself, but she didn't."

Sherman eyed her silently. He wondered if Sharon knew the exact extent to which her words were true, but mindful of the little girl still present, he didn't ask.

"I don't know how to stop what's coming." Sharon admitted with a quiet desperation. "But whatever is going to happen _I know_ that she needs to be there.

Not entirely unmoved by her outburst, he tried to let her down as gently as he could. "Sharon, Hera's blood, it wouldn't help now."

" - It would." She interrupted before he could fully explain. "Her cancer was far more advanced last time. I know! I was there! I saw her!"

_ "_It's not a matter of how advanced the cancer is. Before she was born, Hera's blood lacked a blood type. It has one now and it's not the same as the President's."

"Can't you isolate -"

"- No."

"How do you know if -"

" - I've already tried it!" Cottle finally admitted. "It didn't work. The cancer came back because it's grown resistant to whatever it was in Hera's blood that got rid of it in the first place."

"What about the blood of a full cylon?"

He shook his head.

Her eyes darting across his face as if in search of the answer, Sharon asked. "What now?"

Meeting her gaze head on, Cottle admitted. "Nothing."

"I meant what else can you do?"

"Nothing." he repeated.

"You have to do something! If you don't do anything she'll - " Sharon stopped abruptly as if not saying the word would make it any less true.

Sherman wondered what it was about this particular woman that made them all fight so hard against that which was so clearly inevitable, but the truth was he was guilty of it too.

He said it for her. "She is going to die."

_tbc_


	11. Chapter 11

_Chapter 11_

Bill didn't bother to look up as he felt two hands pressing on his shoulders. The weight, the strength in the hands was wrong.

The weight settled around his shoulder as Saul sunk down to his level. "I just heard. Bill, I am so sorry."

Uncertain if Saul was expressing condolences for what had occurred in this room or if there had been some development since he left, Bill said nothing.

The silence the two men sat in was broken by the sound of the hatch opening.

"Hey. I came to find you. To tell you that the Pres -" Kara stopped mid word.

Seeing Kara's eyes travel the room caused Bill to take in the damage himself. To see what a mess he had made of everything.

"Starbuck!" Saul prompted.

"Sir." Her eyes finally snapping over to their spot on the floor, she broke the suspense. "The President was starting to wake up. I thought you would want to be there."

Standing, Saul held out a hand to help him up.

* * *

Having no where else to be, after accompanying Romo to seek out Cottle, Gaius accompanied him back to the Admiral's quarters so that Romo could collect his belongings.

"We just stopped by to -" Having wandered in the open hatch, something had caused Lampkin to abruptly stop speaking and advancing.

Looking past Lampkin, seeing the ransacked room, Gaius make the intuitive leap. "Her hair. It's not here. She kept it on _Colonial One. _She wouldn't have wanted you to be the one to find it after."

A breath later he added, "She told me I could have it."

Perhaps, it would have been best to leave out that last bit, Gaius realized backing out the door as the Colonel tried to hold back the Admiral as he lunged toward him.

* * *

Arms still around his center, Tigh spoke. "Bill, come on. You should get to sickbay." Handing Bill Laura's glasses from the wreckage on the floor, Saul nodded towards the hatch. "You go. Kara and I will sort this out."

As he pulled back the curtain and entered the area around her bed, Lee stood offering him the seat beside her.

But Bill remained standing. From what Kara had said, this wasn't what he had hoped to find.

"Oh good. You brought them."

Bill said nothing as Lee took the glasses from his hands and arranged them in hers.

Finally finding his voice, he asked. "Kara said she was awake ..."

"She was ... for a little while."

"How was she?"

"She was …" His son paused a moment. " … asking about you. Like always."

Lee put a hand on his shoulder for a moment before walking away, leaving them alone together.

_* * *_

With entirely too much effort, she finally managed to succeed in opening her eyes and pushing out one small word. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Missed you." She offered one half of one of their usual exchanges, but he didn't offer it back.

He held her hand in his. Unable to meet her eyes, he was staring at where their hands were joined. His thumb tracing back and forth over hers.

It took a few minutes before he managed to again speak. "Cottle says you never made an appointment. You weren't going back for treatment, were you?"

Her mouth would have gone dry at his words if it weren't already painfully so.

His voice was low. She could hear the horror in it. The guilt that he had brought her back to her suffering against her will.

She couldn't, she wouldn't leave him with that.

Using her free hand, she lifted his chin, beckoning him to look at her.

Her eyes shining with the tears that she blinked back to keep from escaping, she gave him her most dazzling smile and did what she did so well - she lied to him. "I wasn't aware that the President of the Twelve Colonies needed to make an appointment."

Squeezing his hand, she continued. "I had no idea when the meeting with Lee would be over so I couldn't give a time. Besides I was reasonably certain that Cottle wouldn't send me away just because I didn't have an appointment."

And she was right.

When she asked a passing medic to find Cottle and tell him that she wished to restart the doloxan treatments, Cottle didn't send her away.

But neither did he come to start the treatment.

Ishay was the one to return with the bag of poison.

With Bill by her side, Laura waited for it to start, but it didn't come. The pain, the nausea, the chills - all the discomfort that always came with the poison that was pouring into her veins wasn't there.

As the minutes ticked by her eyes kept moving back to the bag that hung on the pole and the liquid that emptied into her.

As her eyes traveled back from the bag to Bill again, she realized his thumb had stopped moving – the lack of her usual response to the medication had not gone unnoticed by him either.

Looking up from where their hands were together, she found his face to be a mask of stoicism. But she saw through it.

Closing her eyes and shifting uncomfortably, she made up her mind.

"Bill, could you get the book that we were reading?"

She didn't even have to ask for him. As soon as Bill disappeared, Cottle appeared. Clearly, he had been skulking around.

She sized him up for a moment before asking. "So what happened, Doc? Run out of the high test stuff?"

_tbc_


	12. Chapter 12

_Chapter 12_

_Cottle_

As soon as Bill disappeared, Cottle appeared. Clearly, he had been skulking around.

She sized him up for a moment before asking. "So what happened, Doc? You run out of the high test stuff?"

"No," he responded placidly. "I just wasn't sure if that was what you had actually ordered."

"I agreed to make the appointment." She responded.

"Agreed?" Cottle repeated in a huff. "Browbeaten into it more likely."

Her only response was a tight smile.

"You may have said it to him, but you didn't make the appointment and you were never going to."

"You don't know that. You can't possibly know that. Even _I _don't know that."

Sighing, Cottle took the seat next to her. "He's not going to let you go easily."

"I know. He's not ready. He needs a little more time to let go."

"He is _never_ going to be ready to let you go."

"_He will._ He won't always be like this. He just needs more time to accept things for what they are."

She looked away as he put his head down at what she knew he perceived as her blind and desperate optimism.

"It won't always be like this." she insisted. "He'll come around. I know he will."

Deep in his throat, Cottle made a sound of dissension.

She was ready, but she needed Bill to be ready too.

With tears in her eyes, but a smile on her lips, she looked back at Cottle. "He says he can't live without me."

"Well I hope your ego can sustain the blow, but that's hyperbole. He's lived without you before. He can do it again. You aren't two halves of one whole."

Her smile again tightened.

Cottle sounded tired. "You know it isn't curing you. It's only prolonging it."

The smile was gone as she nodded wordlessly.

"He doesn't have to know." Cottle offered. "You come in. I'll run a bag of saline – you're usually borderline dehydrated anyways. You two can have your book club meetings and he'll be none the wiser. I'll tell him the cancer's just not responding to the treatment as well as we had hoped this time."

"You want me to lie to him?" She asked indignantly.

"Get off the high horse lady!" he chided her. "It's not like it would be the first time!"

Her eyes took on a shine even as her lips curled into a genuine smile.

Tenderly, he inquired. "When is he going to learn that you aren't to be trusted?"

"That's just the way he is. Too trusting and too forgiving. It's his greatest flaw and his greatest strength."

"I know – I've known that fool decades longer than you have, but come on! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Is there even a saying for fool me a dozen times?"

Still in a huff, he continued. "_You_ staged your own mutiny!"

"Yes, I did."

"Turned his own son against him!"

"And Kara. Don't forget Kara." She pointed out.

"You ran off with a third of the fleet!"

Between them, they listed some of her many, many transgressions.

"I gave the order to assassinate another Admiral."

"Stole a baby."

"Ordered the genocide of an entire race."

"You tried to steal the Presidency."

Laura chortled. "There was no _try -_ I _did _steal the Presidency!"

"I've got time on New Caprica that says otherwise." Countered Cottle.

"Not that time."

To his raised eyebrow, she coyly explained. "President Adar fired me. _Galactica_'s decommissioning ceremony was to be my last act as Secretary of Education." Her mouth twisted into a grim grin as she remembered leaving the cockpit of _Colonial Heavy 798_ to sit in the passenger compartment while waiting to see if her ID code would be recognized by the Case Orange system. "But he neglected to deactivate my access codes."

Cottle matched her grin. "So who was next in line? Was there anyone?"

"I asked Billy once to run it down for me. I told him I was curious. I think he suspected, but he never came right out and asked. There was someone from the People's Council. I met with him once. He wasn't anything special."

"No, not like you." Cottle shook his head amused, but a moment later he again turned serious. "And that's not the half of what you've held back from him!"

It was his turn to elaborate to her raised eyebrow. "You never told him what went on in detention on New Caprica."

She hedged. "What makes you think that I didn't tell him what went on in detention?"

"That the cylons still exist. That he would agree to make an alliance with any of them."

"Mmm." She gave a slight murmur in response.

"I think he'd airlock our Sharon just to be thorough if he had even an inkling of what went on down there."

He gave her a moment before again making his offer. "I helped you hide your cancer the first go around. Aided and abetted in your escape from the brig. I was your co conspirator in stealing a baby." Taking her hand, Cottle gave it a squeeze and asked. "So what's one more secret between friends?"

Squeezing back, she shook her head. "Not this time."

"This is what_ you_ want?" he asked once more.

Smiling, she nodded. "I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I know those words don't carry with them the weight that they once did," she admitted ruefully. "But I do want it."

He gave her hand a final squeeze and rose from the chair.

"What's going on?" Returning in time to see Cottle hang the new bag, Bill questioned its presence. "What's that?"

"Doloxan." Cottle's response lacked its customary bark. "She's dehydrated. I told Ishay to run a bag of saline first. She didn't tell you?"

Bill didn't say anything.

"Good help ..." Cottle muttered. " ... so hard to find."

After giving the drip rate one final adjustment, Cottle departed having managed to avoid ever looking at the other man. Laura wondered if it was guilt or disgust.

She grimaced and closed her eyes as the real doloxan began to take effect.

He needed more time.

As the tears began to prickle at her eyes, he took her hand in his.

She understood.

What she had said to Cottle, it hadn't just been desperate optimism. There was a truth to her words.

She knew what came after this. She'd seen what was waiting for them. He hadn't. He needed this. He needed more time to accept what was happening. To make his own peace with it.

And she would give him that time as best she could.

She would wait him out.

After all, this was hardly a surprise. Hadn't she seen something of this in the visions that she had shared with Elosha while on the baseship?

As she squeezed his hand reassuringly, he began to continue the tale that they had started the night before.

_tbc_


	13. Chapter 13

A/N Something I should have mentioned in the beginning ...

This fic isn't meant as AU. It's meant as something that can slip between episodes without really altering canon - the way that the novels do. To me it's not really AU if it can fit in between the scenes of the show and in the end you put everything back where you first found it.

_Epilogue_

Moving through sickbay, Bill stopped short as he caught sight of her. Standing a ways away, he looked down not at her, but at all the tubes and wires running off of her. At all of the things that she had never wanted.

Cottle was seated by her side. They hadn't spoken since the last time Laura had been admitted. Cottle getting her hooked up for her treatments and then departing for other parts of sickbay, Bill arriving a few minutes late, they usually manged to avoid each other all together when she was here.

Moving closer, putting his hand over hers, he started to ask. "She still hasn't -"

" - She regained consciousness for a short time. I gave her something to get her back to sleep. She needs the rest. She'll be out for a few hours at least."

Bill nodded. "How's Athena?"

"She'll recover – physically. Any word on Hera?"

Bill shook his head. "Will I be able to take Laura home when she wakes up or do you need to keep her overnight?"

Pity in his eyes, Sherman looked at him a moment before giving his head a slight shake.

He didn't have to actually say the words for Bill to get his meaning - this was home now.

Now this, _this_ was _everything_ that she had never wanted.

Eying the book and magnifying glass in his hands, Cottle gestured to the small table by the bed. "They brought the book she had with her when they transported her here."

As Cottle left, Bill picked up the book from the table.

_Searider Falcon._

It had been ludicrous to think that just because he had put it atop the highest shelf that she wouldn't get it down.

He didn't like the idea of her getting to the end of their story without him, but he hadn't exactly given her much choice in the matter.

Running his hand along the blemished cover, he looked over at her again. Loath though he was to admit it, it was getting harder and harder to deny that the time to finish their story was drawing near.

She was still sleeping as he took a seat and began to read. Wanting to make the story last a little longer, he started a little ways before where they had last left off.

"The raft was not as seaworthy as I'd hoped."

Only one line in, but the words were so cutting he already found himself wanting, needing to stop.

But he didn't.

"The waves repeatedly threatened to swamp it. I wasn't afraid to -"

Putting the magnifying glass down on the table and leaving the book on his lap, he reached up to stroke her cheek.

From memory, he recited the passage.

"I wasn't afraid to die." His voice caught as he went on. "I was afraid of the emptiness that I felt inside. I couldn't feel anything. And that's what scared me. You came into my thoughts. I felt them. It felt good."

Looking down at her hand, he gently brushed away those tears of his that had landed there.

Looking back to the book on his lap, he saw that of their own accord, the well worn pages had turned. The book's binding was creased as if to a part read many times. It had to be a favorite passage of Laura's for he had never made it that far in the book before.

Aloud, Bill began to read.

"Then I dug into the stump and pulled rocks from the ground until my fingers bled. I collected seeds from the few fruits the island offered and planted them in long straight furrows like the ranks of soldiers. When I finished I looked at what I had done. I did not see a garden. I saw a scar."

He broke off again, but this time marshaling his emotions and his tears, he went on. "This island had saved my life and I -" His voice caught again. " - I had done it no service."

Unable to continue, he put the book back on the table and just sat there staring at the woman he loved.

Ishay nodded to him in greeting as she approached with a clearly marked bag in hand. He interrupted her as she reached up to remove the only half empty bag of saline.

"Don't."

He had said it so softly, she made him repeat it. "Sir?"

"Don't."

"Admiral?" the medic looked at him questioningly.

He shook his head.

"It's all right, sir." She spoke words that she no doubt thought were reassuring. "The doctor has her so doped up she won't even notice. She'll sleep right through -"

Closing his eyes, just as softly, he repeated himself. "Don't."

Poison still in hand, she retreated.

Taking Laura's hand in his, he pressed his mouth to it. Her hand still in his, reopening their book, Bill plodded forward to the end.

_Finis_

So … if you've taken the time to read all the way to the end I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story. Loved it? Hated it? Indifferent about it?


End file.
